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Case study in brief:
Lacking leadership skills The NIO was created in 1972 after the Northern Ireland Government was dissolved in the face of a worsening security situation. The NIO has responsibility for Northern Ireland’s constitutional and security issues. After the Government suspended the Assembly and Executive of locally elected Northern Ireland Ministers in October 2002, NIO Ministers also assumed responsibility for the activities of the Northern Ireland Departments. In recent years, in common with many other public sector organisations the NIO had focused on improving capacity to address strategic issues and promote innovation in the delivery of policy. Since the Government's introduction of the Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) in 1998, public sector organisations have focused on improving their capacity to address strategic issues and promote innovation in the delivery of policy. Part of the NIO's approach was to introduce a significant change programme. When this programme finished, through internal consultation and a series of focus groups, the NIO identified five key areas for further improvement. One such area was 'leadership'. The NIO's identification of 'leadership' coincided with the Government's ongoing push on effective leadership in the Civil Service to deliver its public service agenda. The Government has put in place a number of initiatives to develop leaders with specific attributes. These include a leadership profile for visible leaders who inspire, trust, take personal responsibility for delivering results, work in teams and across traditional boundaries. The profile also states leaders should be focussed on strategic outcomes, matching resources to business priorities, honest, courageous and realistic with staff and Ministers. The feedback within the NIO was that as a group they were not good leaders. There was also a perception that the board’s commitment to improving leadership skills across the organisation was not clear. It was agreed that this gap needed addressing and that there was an urgent need to improve leadership skills across the organisation. The NIO recognised that it needed to find a consultancy partner that would help the 135 or so senior and key middle managers in the organisation to enhance their leadership skills to create a more consistent approach throughout the department. To find the right partner for such a large project required a full procurement exercise. The NIO received 41 applications, which were reduced to six presentations to the NIO Board. This included a presentation from the collaborative leadership consultancy cpcr. Chemistry The NIO selected CPCR as it had a solid track record of working with other government departments and bodies such as the Department of Trade and Industry, Food Standards Agency, Ministry of Defence, and the National Assembly for Wales. This track record also came with excellent references. It was also important to the NIO that the chosen consultancy displayed strong people skills and that they presented a good organisational fit. Gillian Preece, Deputy British Joint Secretary at the British-Irish Intergovernmental Secretariat, explained: "While CPCR proved to have the best credentials, it was also vital for us that the chemistry felt right. The softer people skills that we wanted to develop meant that it was important that we were comfortable with the people who would be running the programme. We also wanted to feel confident in their ability to understand us in terms of our working attitudes. We felt that cpcr was the best choice in this respect, as they clearly demonstrated an understanding of our culture and how best to introduce change through improved leadership skills." Identifying leadership All NIO and agency staff at Grade A (equivalent to Grade 7 in the broader Civil Service) and above took part in the programme - around 135 people. This included the most senior members of staff, the Departmental Board. This ensured that everyone within the organisation who had responsibility for managing people was given the opportunity to identify where they personally needed to improve on their leadership effectiveness. The NIO had already created a leadership-development working group, which identified the attributes and behaviours they wanted from their leaders. It developed a competence framework that documented the effective and ineffective behaviours that would be displayed under seven key leadership attributes:
CPCR built the NIO's leadership programme around these seven key attributes, tailoring it to meet the specific cultural needs of the organisation. The participants were divided in to three groups and CPCR tailored the programme so that no tranche was identical in its approach. "The programme wasn't a 'cut and paste' of something else CPCR had worked on, which it could so easily have been. The 'one size fits all' approach is what gives the consultancy business a bad name, and is probably why I originally had a certain amount of scepticism when the programme started. However, CPCR tailored the programme to be very focused on both the needs of the organisation and the individual. No mean feat I would imagine!" continued Preece. Achieving the goal CPCR kicked off the programme with its 360 degree feedback approach. This asked for self assessment against the set of leadership competencies developed by the NIO. It also involved feedback from the subject's line manager, staff, peers, and those outside the organisation with whom they had a working relationship. The second phase of the programme helped individuals develop their personal leadership development plan. Using the 360 degree feedback results, they identified the core areas for focus. The third phase - 'people and change' - helped individuals understand how to effectively manage their teams through periods of change within the organisation. This particularly helped them develop skills for understanding how people react in different ways to situations and how to adapt management styles to accommodate that. This included a series of half-day visits to a variety of organisations outside the public sector, including Tesco, Royal Mail, and the two Belfast airports. The fourth phase focused on honing individual coaching skills, helping participants to improve how they develop their people both as individuals and teams. "I found the coaching skills session particularly valuable. The two day workshop involved mostly role play, where we were given the opportunity to work with partners. So, there was less on theory and more on the practicalities, giving us the opportunity to practise and refine our approach to different situations," said Preece. The leadership programme also included optional elements that would be tailored further to meet the needs each individual had identified in their 360 feedback, and the competency framework first set out by the NIO. These included:
"There have been supportive follow-up sessions which helped keep people on track and made sure we were progressing and achieving the goals we had set out in our leadership development programme. When you take part in a formal learning programme, it's so easy to return to the day-to-day and lapse back in to your old habits. CPCR made sure we didn’t do that by giving us the support and opportunity to take time out to re-focus effectively. It really has been a process of continual progression and improvement," said Preece. The NIO was also pleased with the efficient administration behind the programme: "By my own admission, I'm not a natural organiser and I was pleasantly surprised to find that my involvement on that side was significantly less than I had anticipated. This gave me more time to focus on working with CPCR to develop the programme, and myself! They were also incredibly flexible and showed patience and understanding as we had to cancel quite a few workshops and reschedule, due to political demands," continued Preece. Return on investment As part of its evaluation programme, the NIO has commissioned an external evaluator from the Civil Service College to assess the progress of individuals picked at random. This will involve six monthly reviews over a two year period where improvement is assessed and new goals set for achievement. Preece concludes: "The feedback has been very positive. In particular people have found enormous value in coming together in groups that cross departmental boundaries and having the opportunity to share and progress issues. While this might be the norm for most commercial organisations, there hadn’t been so much opportunity to do this before at the NIO. They want to continue this as they now understand the immense value of sharing experiences. "I’d be surprised if anyone finished the programme without having an understanding of how to work with and manage people more effectively. From now on we should all be better at coaching, listening and allowing individuals to have input into the effective running of their department and the NIO as a whole. CPCR has delivered us some very tangible value which we will continue to build on." The NIO is now rolling out a leadership programme further down the organisation to include B1 and B2 staff (SEO and HEO equivalent), and CPCR has played a role in helping to develop this.
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